In its first day as a public company, Boulder-based Rally Software Development Corp. raised $84 million in its initial public offering by pricing 6 million shares at $14 per share.

The offering surpassed previous expectations that it would sell 5.75 million shares in the range of $11 to $13 per share.

Wall Street responded favorably to the firm that develops project management software and services to companies that use the Agile software development methodology. Shares of Rally (NYSE: RALY) closed up $3.81, or 27.2 percent, to $17.81 on Friday.

The stock traded as high as $18.44.

"Honestly, it hasn't quite sunk in yet," Rally CEO Tim Miller said hours after watching "RALY" become reality. "It sure is exciting -- very fun to ring the (NYSE) bell."

Rally officials intend to use the proceeds for working capital, other general corporate purposes, data structure infrastructure, sales force, expansion of its international presence and -- potentially -- for the acquisition of other firms.

"I'm coming back to the office Monday morning and, just like any other Monday, we'll continue to work on building the business and closing our quarter," Miller said. " ... There's nothing per se that the IPO changes in our strategy, but we do have a big balance sheet now and it will potentially enable us ... to continue on our (merger and acquisition) strategy."

Lead book-running managers for the offering are Deutsche Bank Securities and Pipe Jaffray. Needham & Co., JMP Securities and William Blair are acting as co-managers.

Rally Software -- founded in 2001 as F4 Technologies Inc. -- has experienced torrid growth during much of the past decade.

Rally positioned itself as providing on-demand products and services to developers using Agile development, an emerging methodology aimed at emphasizing collaboration, communications and the frequent deployment of software.

For the fiscal year that ended on Jan. 31, Rally lost $10.9 million on revenue of $56.8 million. During the comparable period a year ago, Rally lost $11.6 million on revenue of $41.3 million, according to financial statements filed with the SEC.

Rally's growth has been "good, not great," but has strength in that 77 percent of its revenue is attributed to subscriptions and support, IPO analyst Francis Gaskins said.

In a recent IPOInstitution.com report, Gaskins suggested that Rally's stock may perform similarly to other cloud-based firms' IPOs.

He noted that companies such as Silver Spring and Model N posted similar retreats.

Gaskins recommended that Rally be a "buy" on the IPO, "and most likely an immediate sell."

Wall Street darling or not, Rally's Miller remains more than bullish on the firm's potential.

"We don't see any speed bumps in the future at this time," he said. "One of the things about the Agile (industry), we expect and adapt quite frequently ... this year it's continuing to double down on all the investments that we've made in the past."

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